LinkedIn – More Prospects And Sales

Get More Prospects And Sales With LinkedIn

LinkedIn is one of the most popular social marketing sites on the Internet and within the top 30 of all sites in the world. In light of this, you can be assured of a high level of visibility. Using LinkedIn regularly affords you to the opportunity to reach more prospects to make more sales.

There are many ways to stand out on LinkedIn. It’s easy to position yourself as a professional, worthy of getting to know. Once you learn the rules and apply the suggested methods and strategies, you’ll be well on your way to LinkedIn success.

What is LinkedIn?

LinkedIn is a social media site designed to help professional people, and businesses, connect with each other. Create your personal profile. Include your education, current and previous employment, interests, and skills, as well as other info. LinkedIn will start connecting you with people you are likely to know. It is a great way to connect with long-lost friends and colleagues, as well as discover new friends, potential business associates, and prospects.

Through your initial connections, you can get to know other people in their circle, who may be working in the same niche or industry. Beyond your immediate connections, you can also connect with people the site suggests. These are often the movers and shakers.

Follow prominent people in your niche. The content you see on your homepage will be from them, and/or chosen by the network, as something that might be of interest to you given your background and current job. In this same way, you can also get followers who are interested in the content you post.

Why use LinkedIn?

LinkedIn is the most trusted social media site on the Internet. The reason is that you have to be honest about who you are and what you do in order to be able to make connections on the site. There is no way to hide behind a cloak of anonymity or pretend to be someone you are not. It is very difficult to create fake profiles on LinkedIn because they restrict your contacts to people you might already know.

It also gives you a great opportunity to showcase who you are and what you know, positioning yourself as an expert worth working with. Around 80% of job recruiters and Human Resources professionals use LinkedIn to find people to fill the posts they are hiring for and to learn more about you. The last thing you want people to see is your Facebook photos of wild parties. LinkedIn helps you establish a professional profile online and link with like-minded people.

Make the Most of LinkedIn

In order to start marketing yourself successfully on LinkedIn, you will need to put a few things in place to build your LinkedIn foundation. Once your profile is complete, there are additional things you can do to increase your success and your authority level.

Building Robust Profile Pages

Building a robust profile page for LinkedIn can take many hours, but the effort will be worth it. It also starts with a great headshot photo of yourself and a custom header image that captures who you are or what your industry is.

The summary section is like an executive summary of who you are and what you do. Try to create one that speaks to the needs of your target audience. Why would they want to hire you or do business with you? Think of some of the most common problems people have in relation to your niche. You have 2,000 characters to sell yourself well, so make the most of them.

Listing Employment and Schools

Note that as you list these, the top part of your profile will be populated with the data. You can manually edit some of it, such as your current title, by clicking on the little pencil icon to the right of the date field. In other cases, however, the information from the employment and colleges section can’t be edited. Whatever you list first in that section is what will appear.

Having said that, you can drag and drop the content up or down, so while it might be out of order chronologically, it might mean listing a more prestigious school first, for example. Note that as with a resume, you should list all of your employment starting with your current job, and work your way back in reverse chronological order.

Listing Your Skills

This can be one of the most convincing sections of your profile, in which you list what you are able to do. It is important not just to show what you can do. It is also a chance to get endorsements from people who know you.

Getting Recommendations

You can also get recommendations from others to boost your authority and provide social proof. These can be turned on or off, in case you don’t want the information to show.

The easiest way to get skill endorsements and recommendations is to give them yourself. Once you have filled in your profile as much as possible, take a few moments each day to visit profiles of the people you know best. Go down to the skills section and click the plus button (+) next to the skills you wish to endorse.

To give a recommendation, look at the top area of their profile. Click on the three dots (the more button) and toggle down. Choose to recommend the person. Note that you can also request a recommendation on that same menu.

Endorsements and recommendations, like customer testimonials, provide proof that you have the skills and knowledge that you have mentioned on your profile. If you’ve worked with or for leaders in your niche, having your name linked to theirs will help to build trust with others. Make it a priority to give and ask for endorsements and recommendations.

Job Searches and Listings

You will often see job listings in your profile. You will also be given recommendations for positions, and for companies based on all the information you put in your profile. This is a great way to match up with various profitable opportunities.

Custom Public Profiles

LinkedIn offers a public profile section for people you are not connected with, and a fuller, more detailed one for those you are linked to. You can control what shows in the public profile by checking or unchecking the boxes next to each of the times. You might want to keep it short and sweet, with just the main highlights, so they won’t have to scroll a lot to learn more about you.

Publishing Your Content

LinkedIn allows you to post content, just like any other social site. The key difference is it also allows you to publish full-length articles. This can give you a good deal of visibility on the site and grow your leads provided you are writing useful articles related to your niche.

Sharing Slideshows

LinkedIn recently bought Slideshare.net, the most popular slideshow-sharing site in the world. Now, you can post your PowerPoint decks and link to them in your profile. You can also share them on your newsfeed, commonly referred to as Insights. Followers and people you are connected with will see your Insights whenever you post them.

LinkedIn Premium

Thus far, all of the features we have mentioned are free to use. If you want to take your leads and sales to the next level, there are premium levels of service, billed monthly. There is a general level of service, and one designed to help generate sales, amongst others. Learn more here: https://premium.linkedin.com/

The premium level will allow access to InMail, so you can send personalized messages to people beyond your own network. This can be a great opportunity to expand your contacts in your niche and develop partnerships and other opportunities with the “movers and shakers” in your industry.

Sponsored Content: This allows you to promote your content with targeted native advertising.

Text Ads: Create text ads, which appear on the Insights (news feed) page to help will drive traffic.

Sponsored InMail: This allows you to send targeted messages directly to the people you think will be most beneficial to your business.

Check Social Selling Index (SSI)

Your SSI on LinkedIn is a ranking of how well you are doing in relation to using the 4 main aspects of the site:

Establishing your professional brand

Finding the right people

Engaging with insights (content showing on your feed)

Building relationships

Each of the 4 areas is given a score out of 25, and an overall score out of 100. You can also see how you compare to others in your industry and in the LinkedIn network as a whole.

Interacting on LinkedIn

You can like, comment and share just as you would with Facebook. You can follow experts, and you can get followers yourself. Commenting, especially on a post by someone prominent, can give you increased visibility. Those who see the comment can click on your name to learn more about you. If they like what they see, they can send a request to connect with you. You can say yes or no as you wish.

Don’t just connect. Build relationships by getting to know new contacts in your niche. Don’t try to do a hard sell. Rather, think about a win-win for you both through your connections with each other.

LinkedIn Groups

LinkedIn also has a range of groups based around niche topics. Use the search bar at the top and type in keywords to search for people, groups, and companies. You can also start a group of your own if you wish, such as a mastermind group in your niche.

Join in regularly, being helpful without acting like a pushy salesperson and you should soon grow your network and get more traffic to your site.

Showcase Pages

If you don’t just want to market yourself as an individual, you can create a company showcase page to demonstrate all you have to offer. Use the page to give the most important details about your company and links to various landing pages.

Create a range of free items that would be of interest to people in your niche. Brainstorm common problems many people have, especially beginners, and offer how-to e-books or e-courses. Create a squeeze page for them to subscribe to your email-marketing list about that particular topic. Once they are on your list, you can build a relationship with them and generate sales.

E-courses work well because you can send them several emails, not just one with the download link. Over the course of the emails, they will get to know you and decide whether you are worth doing business with. This can lead to sales and Joint Venture Partnerships (JVPs), in which two experts or companies decide to work together for mutual profit.

In terms of landing pages, feature links to your top-selling products and services. Every time you launch a new product, be sure to announce it on your LinkedIn page. Consider writing a free article about the topic in order to provide a context for a link to your sales landing page.

Email Marketing List Invites

Industry experts like to keep their finger on the pulse of what is happening in their area of expertise, so don’t be afraid to invite them to join an “inner circle” email-marketing list. Be sure this is your best content and links to your best products related to that content.

LinkedIn Profinder connects business owners with freelancers. Apply to be a Pro at:

You will see client requests related to your listed skills. You can apply for them if you wish, or skip them. There are far fewer freelancers on this network compared to busy sites like Upwork, so while there may not be as many projects to bid on, it is free and there is less competition.

LinkedIn Pulse connects you with what’s hot in terms of news, topics, influencers, and publishers. Try to link your products, services, and expertise to what is trending, for greater visibility.

LinkedIn is the most popular professional social network, connecting people and businesses and thus creating chances for more leads and sales. If you aren’t using LinkedIn, you could be missing out on a great number of opportunities to build relationships and earn more money doing what you excel at. Visibility is the name of the game at all social networks, but LinkedIn’s free and paid tools can help you grow your subscriber and customer lists as long as you are willing to spend time and effort on your account and connections each day.

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